The ACF London opens our 2024 CineClub season with a very special tribute to the late Austrian-UK filmmaker, media scholar and archaeologist Frederick Baker. We are pleased to announce that historian Johannes Feichtinger, who worked on the film, will give a short introduction to the screening.

The Class of '38; Exile & Excellence was directed by Frederick Baker and based on an idea by Anton Zeilinger. Eminent scientists and scholars who were persecuted by the Nazis following the annexation of Austria in 1938 and were forced to leave the country shed light on these traumatic experiences at a young age and give an insight into how forced migration and displacement have shaped their research and lives in academia.

Frederick Baker divided his time between London, Berlin and Vienna, producing and directing films, as well as writing articles and books. In the book The Art of Projectionism (2007) he defined a projectionist school of filmmaking and media art. His first narrative ambient short, Ruhetag, was premiered in Vienna in 2007. Ring Road: A Viennese Odyssey, the first ambient feature film, was premiered at the Biennale in Seville in 2008.

His interview partners included Yoko Ono, George H. W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, Václav Havel, Shimon Peres, Sir Ernst Gombrich, Simon Wiesenthal and Vivienne Westwood to name just a few.

Join us for this, the first of two commemorative screenings in January.

AT, 2019, 53min, English & German with English subtitles, directed by Frederick Baker